Dear Father of the Nation

“Leave India in God’s hands, in modern parlance, to anarchy; and that anarchy may lead to internecine warfare for a time, or to unrestricted dacoities. From these a true India will arise in place of the false one we see.” ~ Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, 24th May, 1942

“In handing over the Government of India to these so-called political classes we are handing over to men of straw, of whom, in a few years, no trace will remain.” ~Sir Winston Churchill, March 6, 1947

Dear Father of the nation,

We have come a long way since ‘independence’.

Since you gave up the ghost in the wee hours of the journey, we have left behind the ‘false India’ by several light years. Not only we have glorified ‘internecine warfare’ in the name of region, religion, cast, categories and poverty, but have institutionalised all shades of greed, bribery, dishonesty, vandalism, violence, extortion, larceny, maiming, acid attacks, kidnapping, sodomy, rape, gang rape, manslaughter and naxalism.

Beginning with petty pilfering from living and inanimate, natural and the manmade, trees and rocks, buildings and roads, mines and airwaves, sports and wars, we have graduated to pillaging, raping and murdering children, women, wildlife, nature and culture and then holding our heads the highest.

We have looted from the plate of the poor and destitute for the welfare of the downtrodden and weak. We have ensured that food grains rot in decrepit godowns even as countless wriggle for faeces in their bellies. We have taxed and battered the hard working class to pamper the louts and gluttonous middlemen.

We have also compromised the weapons, warships, armoury, vests, snow boots and coffins of the soldiers braving the elements in subhuman conditions. We have silenced the children clamouring for mid-day meals with deadly morsels. We have sabotaged governance to pamper goons and killers and victimised well meaning officials with suspensions and infamy in order to harvest insane vote banks.

We have allowed the motherland to be trampled by Pakistan, China, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Shri Lanka even as our forces have chased naked fakirs in religious places. We have enshrined ‘unrestricted dacoities’ as a matter of right so that the vaults of Swiss Banks may burst at seams even as the nation scours for dimes.

We have fatally maimed a budding economy and sodomised the populace with backbreaking cost of living.

And since the ensuing commotion of the ocean of delinquents was causing such a pain you know where, we segregated them in two categories: those yet to attain majority and hence beyond the claws of justice and those past the minority and hence the very claws of the legislative.

Oh, there are the leftovers too, the Elois, the fodder unto the rapacious gristmills.

If you were to return to the putrefying corpse of the nation that you are alleged to have wrested from alien powers, I am sure you will gloat at the ‘true India’ that has emerged. You will also be amazed at how Sir Winston Churchill’s curse has actually turned into a blessing –all our men and women of politics are a stuff thicker than a rhino’s hide, save one, who sadly remains a man of straw.

Maybe what we needed was a Mother of the Nation and less said the better about the one that acts as if she is!
What is needed is a different kind of nationalist movement now, who will bell the cat is the question that doesn’t have an answer yet

A brave letter, Uma. But as the saying goes: You can knock on a deaf man’s door forever. These politicians are deaf and blind to everything save to the jiggle of coin in their pocket and their will to power.

A powerful and intense letter. It clearly demonstrates each and every aspect whether good or bad (mostly bad) which we all are going through and the fact is, it is getting worse day by day. It was a great pleasure reading the letter Uma 🙂

I believe we are all equally responsible for this – by our silence and choosing the comfortable option for ourselves and our families….How many of are politically active (I’m afraid to ask how many of us even vote!)? How many of us would encourage our children to choose political activism?

Uma,
“the gleaming façade of Beijing had turbulent seas just under the surface.”
— you are totally right on that! I am not crazy about China’s current economic uprising. The price that country paid for that gleaming facade is the “rape of humanity”. It will not last long before some serious problems explode themselves.

A nice account of what has been a bumpy journey of a nation after her independence. How I wish things will change. But it’s not all dark I would like to imagine. Fortunately, coin always possess two sides 🙂

Umashankar, this is a very powerful statement, brilliantly written with passion and a good dose of reality. You are courageous for writing it! I am sorry about what has happened to India, to the land you clearly love.

A powerful post on the abysmal state of affairs. I always scour the paper for some hint of hope but none comes forth, whichever sector you may be reading about. We are equally to be blamed for keeping quiet about all the anomalies hoping someone else will take it on!

Purba, I am more a serf than a master of the language. As for the country, we may or may not weep, crib or howl, but there is this gaping hole in our hearts for what could have been and where we are headed instead.

This morning I read your post once again …. it’s a brilliant, heartfelt, extremely well written piece …in short, measures upto everything we have come to expect from and consistently delivered by USP !

Hit the Post button too quickly. Great post. I wish my anecdotal bordering-on-psychotic devotion to my country still held the fire to write along these topic, but alas – if you can’t stop the volcano, you earn the heart-wrenching right to see the lava burn the beautiful gardens, and that is what I feel now

Brilliant!. This is the anxiety felt by many of the fellow Indians who are wringing their hand in despair. Watching the state of the nation since a few decades, I am amazed at all those ills we encounter on daily basis. Lots of people have failed the nation on the way… I pray daily for my country and all those innocents. Hope God will intervene.

Eloquently written. I am re-reading “My India” by Jim Corbett, first published in 1952. In that book he has written that the 90% of India’s 400 million are simple, honest, brave, loyal, hard-working souls whose daily prayer to God, and to whatever Government is in power, is to give them security of life and of property to enable them to enjoy the fruits of their labours”.

Even today, I find a lot of poor people are still good. It is we the haves who are corrupting the have-not’s by demanding bribes, forcing them to compromise etc etc. It is we the people of India who have failed India. How often we stand up to take on a bully? How often do we refuse to pay bribe? We don’t have the moral courage of Gandhi and many of that generation. Unfortunately we have abdicated our responsibility but talk about the future generation to set right all the ills perpetrated by today’s generation. God save us.